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back to article 'Up to' broadband claims out of control, says Ofcom

Ofcom is still fretting over ISPs who punt services using the "up to" speeds rhetoric in their advertising campaigns. The communications watchdog once again called on self-regulatory ad bodies to change their guidance to give customers "more informed decisions based on the adverts they see". New research into fixed-line …

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  1. Yet Another Commentard

    Regulators - is there a point?

    Surely we need some regulator who will actually do something, not just grumble a bit, and let things continue. It's the same with any regulated field. Maybe we need an OFREG to regulate the regulators and make them do something. Mind you, it would just end up more of the same.

    I propose there should be an OFCOM imposition that says simply you pay the proportion of the "up to" that you achieve. So, for example, advert at "up to 10MB for £20 per month" and you only manage 5MB, you pay a tenner a month.

    ...and what's more, can they sort out throttling and quotas while they are at it.

    4 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Unworkable

      Problem 1:

      You by necessity equate sync speed and throughput, since sync is the only thing reliably and fairly measurable. Confusing sync and achievable throughput allows poor quality ISPs to hide. If you wanted to do it based on throughput are you proposing charging based upon peak throughput (per month), easy to game and essentially meaningless if it's only at 2am. Average throughput perhaps? except that essentially means your connection would be free when you're away on holiday etc., which clearly isn't viable as a pricing model. Why should a user who only uses capacity at peak times pay *less* than someone who's habits use spare capacity when everyone else is asleep?

      Problem 2:

      Long rural lines aren't necessarily cheaper to maintain than short, densely packed lines, so your proposed pricing model has no connection with reality.

      1 0
  2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

    Survey It

    Why not have an app that samples users' upload and download rates and then sends them to OFCOM? They could then publish min, max, mean and median access speeds by time of day for all the ISPs. Then consumers would be able to make their own choice.

    2 1
    1. Skoorb
      Reply Icon

      They do. That's where this research has come from...

      http://www.samknows.com/broadband/signup/ofcom is the sign up page. The table comparing ISPs is on the page linked in the article, along with speed map of the UK.

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    2. Wayland Sothcott 1
      Reply Icon

      Gold dust

      This info would be gold dust. Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISP) would then know which areas would be good for a 2Meg service and which would require a 4Meg service to beat ADSL.

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    3. David Barrett
      Reply Icon

      because....

      How fast is your connection? 15mb/s

      Download something big, watch iplayer and do a speed test at the same time, whats the speed test saying now?

      Any results from an app like this would be skewed by whatever is happening on the users pc/network.

      It would be an option but it would have to be built into the router so that only when there has been a period of inactivity is a speed test done. There is little point if one PC is watching iplayer, at the same time as some one else in the house plays xbox live.. or indeed when some one has left the PC on overnight downloading movies (Not that anyone does that.. its naughty).

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      1. GuyC
        Reply Icon

        They do !

        I've been part of this research and have a second router installed for this very purpose.

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Sam Knows

      http://www.samknows.com/broadband/index.php

      "SamKnows and Ofcom partner in order to carry out a national census on the performance of UK ISPs, focussing on the top six ISPs by subscriber numbers. "

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    5. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      RE: Survey It

      Yes, I think they should be advertised as a 'typical' speeds based on average rates rather than 'up to' speeds. And where a customer opts for a higher package than the entry level, the ISP should test the connection to ensure they can actually get the benefit of the additional money they are paying.

      But the real con is the misundertanding on consumers as to what bandwidth actually means and in what circumstances it is actually useful. In my opionion, even when consumers can get the full speed they still can't or don't make use of it because of other limitations, such as throttling, websites restricting bandwidth and a host of other reasons.

      1 0
  3. Richard 116

    Bleary eyed customers presumably

    "BT came out on top for customers wanting to share "large files or use real-time video communications", according to the research."

    All stopping up until after midnight when their connection becomes usable again.

    1 1
  4. petur
    Megaphone

    Telenet

    In Belgium, Telenet has a product called ' FiberNet' that offers 'lightning fast speeds'. This turns out to be a maximum of 100mbps, which is pretty fast for Belgium to be fair. Expensive too.

    But I wouldn't call it FiberNet, because that makes me think of 10Gb. And their marketing department have no clue of technical language....

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  5. Eponymous Cowherd
    Unhappy

    And that's just the sync speed.

    Once you take into account contention ratios and the number of people using streaming apps (iPlayer, etc) in the early evening, you can, quite often, see speeds in the kilobit range.

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  6. Richard 12 Silver badge
    FAIL

    What rubbish from OFCOM.

    The "Averages" stated give no useful information whatsoever - what happened to all the competent people who used to work at OFCOM?

    Compared 'average advertised' and 'average actually provided' is utterly meaningless - they're going to advertise the faster connections much more than the slower ones. "We provide the slowest boardband in the world" isn't much of an advert, even if it's the product that most of the customers actually buy.

    Where is the comparison of the shortfall between the product sold to individual consumers and the speed they actually receive?

    That's before you get into the deviation - do *any* customers receive the 'up to' speed?

    I'm pretty certain that the answer to that is no, which raises the question of by OFCOM, the ASA and Trading Standards are not stamping on these ISPs with great force for gross mis-selling.

    No other industry can get away with 'up to' claims where no item/customer gets the maximum! A shop on the high street can't say "Up to 50% off" unless a significant percentage of their wares actually are being sold at that discount.

    So where are the raw figures? Do we really have to do a FoI request to OFCOM to get anything usable out of them?

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    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Yah. Typical Ofcom

      Some other thoughts:

      1.Gap between advertised and user experience.

      This is increasing because BT are rolling out ADSL2+. It's an inevitable consequence of the performance curve. So BT could improve these figures by..rolling back their upgrade programme.

      2.Punishing ISPs.

      Consumer choice is all well and good but there's only two broadband suppliers in the UK that can control end-user connection speed and that's VM and Kingston Communications. All other ISPs are dependant on Openreach copper and customer choice is irrelevant there. Even the LLUOs are constrained by the copper and can't do anything about it.

      3.It's all about throughput

      Forget bloody connection speed. Not only is that not under the control of most ISPs but it isn't even what matters. What matters is how fast the data actually travels not how fast it might under ideal conditions. Even better this /is/ under ISP control and is a great differentiator so would be useful target for customer control.

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      1. Wayland Sothcott 1
        Reply Icon
        IT Angle

        WISP

        Wireless Internet Service Providers don't have to use BT copper. It is true we used ADSL in the beginning, well actually we used Bonded ISDN because it was faster than dialup. The point is that faster Internet can be beamed in from another location to the village with the slow Internet. People suffering speeds below 1meg should look for the WISP operator in their area. These are always tiny companies who hardly advertise. Look for odd white boxes on peoples TV antennas, ask them where they get their broadband. It might take a bit of investigation but you will find a WISP near you. If you don't then maybe you should start one.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ofthing = useless

    My guess is that next step for Ofcom, who whine a lot but don't really do anything, could be to fine them "up to" £1000.

    A bit like Ofgem which also consists of a lot of people paid in the 6 digits figures but who seem completely complacent about rising energy prices while energy providers profits increase.

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    1. Wayland Sothcott 1
      Reply Icon

      OFCOM is a decoy

      We direct our anger at Ofcom which keeps our anger away from the real culprits. Instead of getting angry why not roll out some fibre optic cable yourself?

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  8. Willington
    FAIL

    Worse than its bite

    The communications watchdog once again called on self-regulatory ad bodies to change their guidance to give customers "more informed decisions based on the adverts they see".

    Good plan because it obviously worked last time. And when they don't change you can ask them again.

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  9. David 45

    Lies and/or statistics?

    I thought deceptive advertising was supposed to be illegal anyway. This comes very close to it in my opinion. Somebody I know lives right next door to a rural telephone exchange and even SHE doesn't get the "up-to" speeds that her ISP plugs!

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    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      It isn't deceptive.

      That's what 'up to' means. In the same vein as 'Motor vehicle technology supports speeds of up to 350mph'. That doesn't mean your Honda Civic is not a valid motor vehicle. Just because you bought a civic and thought you could brake the sound barrier is your fault. The dealer was quite happy to tell you what the limit specific to your vehicle.

      The most you can accuse advertisers of being is 'a bit cheeky' - but that's their business. Personally I hate it but advertising was never supposed to be accurate. It's always going to include half truths and avoid stating the negative things. Anyone that doesn't understand that is - amongst other things - destined to spend the rest of their life alone :)

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      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Except your simile breaks down...

        It's more like the car dealer sellign you a rocket car and telling you it's speed is 'up to 350 mph', but neglecting to mention that the speed limit is 70 mph (akin to the real top speed you'll get) and that the roads are oversubscribed at busy times, so you'll more likley be doing 15mph (akin to contention).

        In my opinion, they should be limited to putting the 'up to' speed in the small print of their adverts, and using the average speed obtainable, and be forced to also mention the slowest speed you'll get (this figure should be the mean of the bottom quartile of obtainable speeds, sampled evenly at all times of day, or similar, or it would be zero and meaningless). In other words, I'd like to be told that my 'up to 10Mb' service actually averages 6.3 Mb download speed, and a quarter of the time, averages 1.5Mb. They should also be made to advertise both download and upload rates, e.g. that the mean upload speed is only 256Kb.

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      2. Wayland Sothcott 1
        Reply Icon

        20meg on an ADSL MAX line

        It's very deceptive since the people they are talking to need it explained properly.

        If an ISP has a service some where on it's network that goes to 20meg then that should be sold separately from the service which goes to 8meg in that persons area.

        By lumping it all together as one service that goes up to 20meg for £15 per month they lie to the person on an 8meg exchange. What's more, if that person is on a line that supports 1meg they are getting 20 times less speed.

        Because 20meg seems so slow they will probably switch providers to the one that offers up to 40meg and pay £30 per month for the same 1meg service. The more they lie the better it gets.

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  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Flame

    So delivery improving slightly but lies *about* the service being delivered grow massively

    Ofcom should grow some and start putting ISP's on a leash.

    Get them to specify what *percentage* of their customers get this super duper service and what *fraction* of the time they get it in those adds.

    Otherwise it looks like El Reg readers will have to start hitting the ASA with a clue stick.

    Stop promising BS you don't (and *cannot*) deliver.

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  11. Simbu
    WTF?

    lolwot?

    BT provides good internet?! Who did they ask, and what were those people smoking?

    I'd rather go sledging with barbed wire strapped to my arse than use BT broadband again. Crappy speeds, crappy contention, epic packet loss and poorly priced.

    The second O2's LLU service was in my area i was all over it, and i've never looked back.

    1 1
  12. Peter 26
    WTF?

    BT came out on top?

    How did BT come out on top? They throttle anything that isn't port 80, even SSL!

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  13. davefb

    isnt this bloomin obvious

    Due to the way adsl works and the drop off?

    Unless they actually can change the laws of physics?

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Easy solution.

    Ban it.

    Require that companies be allowed, (and required,) to publish one figure - "Average speed at peak times."

    Hey presto.

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    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Oh very useful

      The average speed of a motor vehicle on British roads is 27.3mph. That means it will take 12,1 hours to drive from London to Edinburgh.

      Uh huh. Thanks for that.

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    2. Wayland Sothcott 1
      Reply Icon

      WRONG

      If you encourage people to shop with the company who has the fastest average speed then you will find that rural Internet services will cease. The best way to increase your average speed is not to connected anyone who's speed will be below average. The ISP I work for has one of the lowest average speeds because we specialize in connecting the people farthest from the exchange.

      When you look at a web page it does not travel down the wire at more than 2meg. When you do a download at 8meg compared to 2meg it does not become instant if you had to wait for it on 2meg. Downloads do take a few moments. VoIP and gaming should still be near instant on 2meg or 8meg, the bandwidth is not the speed, the ping is the speed. Throttled upload speed is a sneeky way of limiting your Internet usage since you cannot use your full download bandwidth in real world situations if your upload is throttled. But it still comes out nice on a speedtest.

      The speedtest sites are not that good at showing you the real reason your Internet seems slow. Everyone assumes they need more megabits. A really good speedtest site would shine a light on the ISPs bandwitch shaping and reveal it's silhouette.

      0 1
  15. Ashton Black
    FAIL

    No teef

    Ofcom has no teeth and is not fit for purpose. I mean, appealing to ISP better nature (self regulation!) ? Come on.

    3 0
  16. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    6Mb? luxury

    more like 0.5Mb, and that's what the BT line rates it at also ...

    0 0
  17. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    FAIL

    The difference between advertised and received speeds

    is immaterial as long as one cannot use the bandwidth one has allegedly purchased. If a couple of gigabytes downloaded suddenly puts one in the drives down the speed, or worse, results in one of those 'heavy user' snotty letters, what's the point?

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  18. Guido Esperanto
    FAIL

    Up to' broadband claims out of control, says Ofcom

    before deciding they'll have a discussion about it next year, after their nap.

    3 0
  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So...

    Virgin-on-the-ridiculous still miffed that BT's last complaints against them were held up.

    0 1
  20. Guido Esperanto
    WTF?

    Thats some performance testing

    They managed to do one performance test every 10 seconds in May?

    I mean using the likes of speedtest.net which uses download and upload of files to give an approximate performace reading, takes well over 10 seconds.

    I call shenanigans. But I'd like to be enlightened.

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  21. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    My 'Upto' is what I get

    I just moved to FTTC. The ISP quoted 31Mbits before I signed up. The raw connection to the exchange (as measured by the BT test kit showed 39.9Mbits.

    I regularly get a sustained download speed of 4.2Mbytes/sec.

    It would be good for Ofcom to put a stop to this 'malarkey'. Virgin are still pestering me to sign up to their 50Mbits service despite the fact that their crappy NTL infrastructure in my area can't support 20Mbits reliably let alone 50 and that I know at least three neighbours who have left Virgin in the past three months because as one put it, 'I was better off back in the days of dial-up between 5pm & midnight'.

    For all the ISP's who don't tell the truth... (and no I don't work for one)

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  22. gautam

    yeah yeah

    Tell us something we dont know!

    Tootless tigers that OFCOM is.

    Waste fo time doing the research!

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  23. Tegne
    Terminator

    It isn't all about download speeds.

    They also need to be more transparent about usage caps, contention ratios, port & protocol throttling. I've been getting spammed by BT who are pushing their infinity FTTC on our estate and promising the awesome download speeds... But read the smallprint and unless you subscribe to their high-end package you get a usage cap that wouldn't even touch the sides based on the amount I download on my truly unlimited provider BE internet each month. And it makes little mention of whether they will throttle specific protocols.

    1 0
    1. Wayland Sothcott 1
      Reply Icon

      They do throttle some P2P

      I had someone on BT Infinity try my VoIP connection which goes through my ADSL MAX line. He dialed in to my Draytek router and was able to get better P2P performance through the piggy backing my ADSL than he got through BT. It was crap P2P performance but much better than BT Infinity.

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  24. Dave Bell

    An old problem

    Which average are they talking about?

    I'm not sure than the usual layman's average, the mean, tells us anothing useful.

    For one thing, when it's distance from the exchange which affects speed, there's four times as many people at twice the distance,

    The median might be different: that's the half-way point, the minimum speed half the customers can get.

    I get grumpy sometimes when i see how the available bandwidth to the rest of the internet can plummet in the evenings, Everyone wants to watch streaming video at the same time. The way we use bandwidth has changed a lot since broadband was rolled out, and some of the assumptions made then are badly broken now.

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  25. Snowyslopes

    Force ISPs to charge for what they can deliver

    How about Ofcom forcing ISPs to charge for what they can actually deliver to an address instead of an 'up to' price. So people like me who get <2Mb (I can only get 1Mb) can be charged a maximum of say £5 per month. then a rising scale of maximum charges for <8Mb, <20Mb, etc. Perhaps this might encourage BT and the rest to invest in the rural exchanges instead of ignoring them. And it would stop Sky being able to advertise TV, Broadband, phone line and calls all for £20 a month, but when you enquire its 'sorry our equipment isn't in you exchange but you can have broadband for £17 plus £x for TV and £x for the phone etc'

    2 0
    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Probably not wise

      Connection speed doesn't have a direct impact on cost to the ISP. It isn't what you /can/ do that matters, but rather what you /do/ do and /when/ you do it. It's quite possible for some spotty oik to run their 2Mb/s connection flat out 24/7 downloading porn and TV shows and be far more of a thorn in the side of the ISP than someone with a 20Mb/s connection who only uses it to surf and pick up email.

      Your proposal would probably just make those on longer lines and/or in more remote areas the least profitable. I suppose telcos might decide to try and claw back the profitability through investment but aside from BT (and sort-of VM) there's not much interest in investment at the moment. Probably because Ofcom's meddling has pretty much removed the profitability by fooling customers into thinking they can get everything they need for a pittance.

      1 0
  26. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    After ASA

    Well OFCOM could submit a so called "Supper Complaint" to The Office of Fair Trading. Just give OFCOM 5 more years before they do get round to doing this.

    2 0
    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Dear OFCOM,

      My dinner is cold.

      1 0
      1. Olafthemighty
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        @ LC

        Thanks for that! Saved me posting a reply myself..... oh, bugger.

        0 0
  27. Velv

    Regulation and Standards

    Perhaps since the Government wants to "get everyone online" all the ISPs should be required to list a price for an identical basic broadband service. Give it a Cat standard, or other marking to show it meets the UK Government minimum.

    e.g. 2Mb/s connection, 10GB per month limit, etc

    That should be sufficient for a large proportion of the non-technical market to make a like for like price comparison, then all those who need more (and are probably better placed to understand why they need more) can fight their way through the ISP offerings.

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  28. Danny 14
    Thumb Down

    grr

    useless statistics. I very much doubt people would care much if they were quoted "up to 8mb" and got 7. It is the cases of "up to 8mb" and get 1 or up to 24 and get 5.

    Cable isnt the saviour of all either. Node contention is far more pronounced with cable - im lucky, I live on a road flanked by fields and an old folks estate, I get quoted 20Mb and get 20Mb. My mate further down the road flanked by students is lucky to get 10 (for the same product at the same time) when the students start gaming/downloading.

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  29. Bomberb
    Go

    Up to ....or..... At Least...?

    Why can't they offer a MINIMUM speed ???

    or an 'At Least 20Mb'.

    That would be a lot more honest and would give us a stick to beat them with !

    An SLA not a 'wish list'.

    1 0
    1. IsJustabloke
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      I refuse to enoble a simple forum post!

      I'm not disagreeing with you but why would they hand us a stick to beat them with?

      We don't pay anywhere near enough for the ISPs to be offering SLA's and that is the crux of the matter for all the whinging.

      You pay bottom dollar... you get bottom dollar service. Want a dedicated speed? pay for a dedicated feed with an attached SLA. Good luck on getting that for for £20 a month.

      1 0
  30. P.Nutt
    Holmes

    Grrrr

    10% Increase in speed!!!! I have not ANY speed increase for 6 (count them) years and still lucky to get 1mb connection.

    The internet to me is just for news sites and downloading Itunes updates (slowly). If anything Ofcom should have a minimum standard and demand that anyone on a <2mb connection get it for free. I sure as hell bet that would very quickly get the broadband infrastructure in most regions up to a decent level.

    Mine is the one with the 3g sim in the pocket.

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  31. Ru
    Mushroom

    Speed is such a tiny part of the problem

    Oh noes, average speed of adsl2 installations about 10mbit, vs 'up to 20mbit'. That's still quite a reasonable connection, so long as it isn't crippled by being Unlimited* bandwidth. Seriously, whining about a few megabits here and there is utterly pointless when people will have their connections crippled by traffic management after the first gigabyte downloaded each month.

    When ISPs can no longer advertise Unlimited*, Totally Not Throttled*, We Won't Spy On You* packages, then perhaps speeds can be dealt with, because ultimately 'up to' claims are true (you can get 24mbit if you live next to an exchange) whereas Unlimited* claims are, and have always been total bullshit.

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  32. Jason Rivers
    Flame

    Sold as advertised.

    it's under the "UP TO" speed, which is exactly as advertised, stop being a bunch of idiots and learn what "UP TO" means, I could sell you "UP TO" 100mbps, and give you 512kbps, it would still be within the advertised amount.

    The only time it would be wrong would be if I sold you 101mbps, then it's over the "UP TO" amount, and thus is incorrect advertising. ISP's don't need to change what they tell people is their "up to" speed, People need to learn what "Up To" means, it means "NO MORE, But could be less"

    /rant

    2 3
    1. VinnyR
      Reply Icon

      "UP TO" is meaningless

      But the problem is that "UP TO" can be anything. There seems to be no liability on the provider to PROVE that you can get the fastest speed and how regularly. I would say that there should be some kind of measure stating that on average speeds should be within 20% of the "UP TO" speed. Otherwise I can have a service which I state is up to 1Gb and charge £100 per month for it and only actually provide 1Mb.

      What we need along with the "UP TO" speeds is SLA's and the relevant software on the routers to give the figures to back them up.

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    2. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      It's *not* as advertised, that's the point.

      If a high street shop said "Up to 50% off" their goods, and the maximum discount of anything there was 5%, Trading Standards would be fining them for misleading the consumers.

      There are specific rules about "Up to..." discounts that specify the minimum set of products that have to be available at the maximum discount, for both the 'number of line items' and the 'minimum stock availability' at the start of the sale period.

      Secondly, the Weights and Measures Act says that it is illegal to sell a customer a "1 Litre" bottle of water that only contains 900ml, but it's fine to sell it if it's got more than 1L inside.

      So manufacturers actually slightly overfill everything to make sure that they don't *ever* under-fill, and spend a lot of money on very accurate and precise measuring devices to minimise the over-filling margin needed. (We sell these weighing devices, it's stunning how fast they can pay for themselves!)

      So why is it only ISPs that are permitted to advertise and sell a service that they *cannot provide to anyone*?

      Would you be happy if you paid £10 for an "Up to 10Mb" service that gave you 1Mb, and then 'upgraded' to paying £30 for an "Up to 20Mb" service where you still got 1Mb?

      By your reckoning, that would be absolutely fine.

      One earlier poster suggested that the ISPs should be banned from advertising "Up to x" bandwidth, and instead could only advertise "At least x". I could get behind that.

      That would mean that people living a long way from the exchange/poor exchanges could not be sold the 'fastest' product.

      That way you'd be able to buy a 5Mb connection knowing that you'll get 5Mb. Of course the ISP will probably throttle your connection down to that 5Mb if your line is actually capable of more bandwidth, but you won't mind that throttling because you're still getting what you paid for.

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  33. Wayland Sothcott 1

    2meg/512k is acceptable

    If you can get a low contention reliable 2meg service then you can pretty much use any Internet service acceptably well. I am not saying you can use more than one heavy service at a time though. The craving for faster speeds is driven from two areas;

    1. People think they are on a super fast 8meg service or other such over sold over hyped speed when in fact they are barely getting 1meg and probably have a slow virused up computer to boot. They imagine the answer to their problems is 40meg where as getting a decent ISP that got them a reliable uncontended 2meg service and cleaned up their computers would make everything acceptable. BT slow the up speed which make things feel slower than the download speed would indicate.

    2. Long line issues with BT in rural areas can often be solved by using a HGV2700 router instead of the crappy home hub. Remembering also to sort out the telephone filtering and wiring. I got one customer from 200k to 2500k. It solved all their Internet problems.

    If these two things fail then remember that most of the country is reachable by Wireless Internet and I don't mean mobile phone dongle since they are crap. A typical £200 install will get you a 2meg service for the subscription price of a normal business Internet service. You might have to work with them to bring the service to your village.

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  34. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    "up to" is exactly what it says it is

    The "up to" speeds may not be what your average user gets, but it exactly describes the situation.

    More importantly, the "unlimited" usage claims are a complete lie as soon as a fair usage policy says there is in fact a limit!

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    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Good point

      ..yeah 'unlimited' is just wrong. Almost no ISPs actually offer such a service. Mine does (BeThere) but not many do.

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  35. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    VM even manage to mislead in the response!

    "Whilst Virgin Media delivers more than 90 per cent of the speeds we advertise".. he forgot the "for the 20 minutes it takes to breach the Traffic Management threshhold".

    The reality is that if you use your VM connection, you will get 25% of what they promise for 90 per cent of the time.

    0 0
    1. VinnyR
      Reply Icon

      I've had no problems

      I have the VM 50Mb unlimited use package and have had no problems at all. Whenever I have tested, it has been the website I visit that has the limitations on speed, not VM.

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  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Up To

    I'm so bored with this whole argument. The broadband industry is not the only industry using "up to" in it's advertsing. Consider sales which advertise "up to 50% off" or insurance ads that tell you that you "could save up to £250". We don't have campaigns to control those advertising claims do we? Why? Because, generally speaking, we assume that people understand the english language and therefore understand what "up to" means.

    If we see a sale advertised as "up to 50% off" no sensible person would expect every item in the sale, or even most items in the sale, to be reduced by half. Likewise with broadband no sensible person would expect "up to 20Mb/s" to deliver 20 meg to all, or even most, users.

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    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      We do in fact have rules about that.

      If you look at the small print in those car insurance comparison adverts, you'll always see a line that says "x% of customers acheived this saving".

      There are trading standards guidelines for the percentage of line items and the amount of stock that must be available at the maximum discount for a shop or chain to claim "Up to y% off".

      (Admittedly, in the case of chains they don'actually to need to have that stock available at every shop, just a certain percentage of them.)

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  37. Rich 30

    up to..

    Maybe the adverts should say...

    "We offer our customers speeds of up to 8MB/s, and most of our customers get an average of 6.5MB/s. Text your telephone number or postcade to 81199 and we'll tell you what speed you can expect to get at YOUR house"

    The localized speed predictions tend to be much more accurate, so surely this would be way fairer. The companies get to advertise their top speeds, show off how great a speed most of their customers get, and give you a personalised speed. Some providers give you this is you visit their sites, i know BT and TalkTalk both offer more accurate speed for your address. Obv these speeds still fluctuate, but its a more fair system, in my opinion.

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  38. Richard Porter
    FAIL

    I don't want to know about "up to" speeds

    I'm paying for "up to 8Mbps". I'm lucky if I get 200kbps. Why can't they use FTTC to give my what I'm paying for? I don't want empty oromises of lightening fast internet when what I get is thunderously slow.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      ISP

      Who's your ISP? If it's BT then if you were getting below 512kbps you would not be paying for 8Mbps. You get a discount on slower speeds. Or did you mean 200kBps which equates to something more like 2Mbps.

      But what's your sync speed. A lot of customers who's ISPs use BT wholesale are really screwing their customers. The sync speeds can be terrific but the ISP's BT Central links are so heavilly contested that the customer' s throughput is dreadful. The ISPs manage to get their cheap price to the custyomer by not paying for enough bandwidth into BT central. If they paid for sufficient bandwidth they wouldn't be cheap any more.

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  39. Andyb@B5

    how about an SLA?

    I would sooner pay for a service where I have a guarantee that the minimum level will always be met and an SLA in place with my provider. Thus if (when?) they fail to meet said SLA they then have to pay me for their inadequacies and the inconvenience I have had to suffer. Oh and the pipe is clean, no packet shapers/qos/filters/whatever by the ISP to make their lives better and not mine.

    I don't care if on a good day I can down load 12Mb/sec if when I really need it I'm unable to get 2Mb/s For me anything over 2Mb/s is just gravy and most the time I'm unlikely to use that capacity. Besides if the reason its a good day is because everyone else went out to enjoy it then I'm likely doing the same.....

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Possible on Sync Speed

      It's possible on sync speed, but not download speed. The ISP can't be held responsible for what happens further up the line.

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    2. AndrueC Silver badge
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      Thumb Down

      SLAs are not cheap

      Even business connections tend not to come with an SLA. As for a home connection I question whether it's even technically feasible. Too many links in the chain a lot of which are a)Not designed with networking in mind, b)Built and maintained for minimum cost and c)Not owned by the company you would have the SLA with.

      When thinking about broadband and the internet issues the best analogy is usually that of a road network. Asking for an SLA is like demanding that the courier getting a package from your office in Oxford to your office in New York get it there within a couple of minutes of the stated time. Almost impossible to achieve and you won't get it for an extra 'couple of quid' on top of the standards charge.

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      1. Richard 12 Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Why would asking my courier be bad?

        The couriers I use advertise "Before 9am/10am/12 noon/5pm", with different scales of charges for each for their next-day service.

        I certainly do expect them to deliver before 9am if that's the service I paid for.

        If they know that can't provide it, then I expect them to tell me what they can provide. "Sorry, we can't do a before 9am delivery to New York from Oxford, our fastest is next-day before 5pm and costs £x".

        And if they fail to provide what I paid for, then I expect a discount/partial refund - which I get.

        I also expect them to use the data they have to continually update their guidelines as to what they can and can't do so they are as accurate as possible every time I buy their service. If it turns out that next-day to New York stops being possible for whatever reason, then I expect to be told!

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  40. VinnyR

    Other countries do it differently - but it is not necessarily good.

    I lived in India (Chennai) for a couple of years and at the time (2008) tried to get the fastest available connection which I think was 8Mb from my telephone provider (Airtel). However they actually refused to sell it to me because they said I was too far from the exchange and there was no prospect of getting those speeds. Instead they sold me the 2Mb connection and I virtually always got the speed that they stated.

    There is a down side to this however. I would have loved a faster connection and I could probably have got 4-5Mb if they had allowed me to buy the 8Mb connection. So the problem is that unless you want companies to vary the cost according to what speed you can get based on distance from exchange etc, you will be limited to either doing what the UK does and "mis-selling" speeds or refusing to sell speeds that aren't available, but at the same time not allowing people to get the speed that is available.

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